Oracle Quest 7
Taking Stock
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Abstract
The time is a thousand years from now. The Oracle series of mixed media works by the 20th-21st century artist Bruce Onobrakpeya, first presented in the 2015 book Onobrakpeya: Masks of the Flaming Arrows, and adapting the visual structure of the opon ifa, a central symbolic and functional form of the Yoruba origin Ifa system of knowledge and divination, have long been missing, rumoured to have been scattered to unknown locations across the world in order to prevent the arcane knowledge they embody being available to any one person,so dangerous these perceptions are whispered to be.
Someone, however, determines to track them down and unearth the mysterious cognition they enable.. This series, combining art criticism, art theory and broader philosophical reflection within the compressed evocative and narrative power of the short story and rich in detailed visual and verbal engagements with each element in each of these works of art, represent this person's account of the quest.
Questions on the logic of the quest.
Having come this far in my quest, I have decided to take stock. I am deeply gratified to observe the sublime achievement represented by Bruce Onobrakpeya's Oracles in their exquisite transposition of opon ifa visual forms and symbolism as well other artefacts from within and beyond the Yoruba culture from which the opon ifa was born. The artist has contributed magnificently to the already grand tradition of opon ifa stylistic genius and symbolic scope.
Where do I go from here? Do I consider myself fulfilled in my pursuit at this point or persist in my search until I have discovered all the Oracles, the six I have encountered so far and the remaining thirteen? Can I sustain the rigour, the physical, mental and economic challenges of the journey, spanning various parts of the globe and several realms of knowledge?
To what degree do I really have a choice in this? My whole life has become concentrated into the narrow but profound intensity of meaning dramatized by Onobrakpeya's Oracles, becoming a matrix around which all other affairs in my life have organised themselves.
Without this quest, in its combination of physical dynamism and reflective challenge, my existence would be disembowelled of its core of meaning.
The 20th century's greatest mountaineer, Reinhold Messner, organised his epochal exertions as activities beyond the physical act of climbing mountains, being more acts of communion enabled by the intersection of the human being and colossal natural forms which dwarf all efforts by humans to take their measure.
Along similar lines, Onobrakpeya's Oracles transcend all efforts to engage with them at whatever breadth and depth of dedication and knowledge. They are a distillation of his decades of experimentation with classical Nigerian shrine aesthetics, dramatizing his distinctive projection of the arcane and enigmatic within the rigorous discipline of opon ifa structure.
Combined with my elation at these great works, the sense of drinking in something wonderful, is the experience of melancholy at the distance between the perfection of these creations and the rupture represented by my life, the often perplexing distance between ideal and actuality, pieces of possibility which I am able to integrate with each other only slowly and painfully, in the spirit of patching a broken pot, a task often carried out in the semi-darkness of limited understanding, groping forward by faith, intuition and scraps of knowledge.
Is it not in recognition of the fact that human beings are largely operating in ignorance of the fullest scope of possibilities in relating to the context of their lives that systems like Ifa, particularly in its divinatory aspect, are developed to address such cognitive gaps?
Is this divinatory approach a demonstration of knowledge external to the self or emerging from within the self or a combination of both?
Can I use the aesthetic frames of Ifa, from its visual to its verbal forms, from opon ifa to ese ifa, Ifa literature, as a means of adapting such cognitive strategies and thereby gaining further light in navigating this semi- darkness in which I live?
Can Onobrakpeya's achievement take me further on this road? Could the unique beauty of his Oracles, their melding of colour and shape, their agglomeration of diverse symbols, enable a sensate and ideational configuration facilitating a panoramic perception of my life within the ambit of the comprehensive circumscription of his oracular circles and potent squares?
In responding to this question, I have developed an Onobrakpeya Oracles Yantra, shown above, adapting the Hindu visual symbolism of the yantra, a geometric form used in representing abstract, cosmological ideas.
A diagram like this, in which four of the Oracles are linked by being located on points on a circle across the various sides of the geometric structure, imply the creation of a cosmos, a visual universe potentially evocative of existence as a whole through its deployment of the suggestive force of the totalistic circumscription of the circle.
This metaphoric breadth is focused through the specificity of a particular set of visual forms, Onobrakpeya's Oracles. A particular selection from the comprehensive associations of the circle is thus developed. This selection may be adapted in terms of the circle's cosmological potential, building the associative value of the circle through a mutually reinforcing range of universalistic and particularistic associations.
I have come a long way from the time of my birth to communicate with you in your own language, a language I am prepared to learn by listening to you with the ears of my eyes.
It has been a long journey. Attentive to you, I understand the journey from where you are to where you point to will be longer still.
What is this place where the road leads? It is difficult to know for sure although various views are advanced as to its nature. From time to time, however, the cloud covering the destination thins a little and certain outlines can be discerned, outlines unique to each seeker but universal in their suggestion of the integration of the struggles of a lifetime, struggles encapsulating, in a manner unique to each person, the significance of the journey of the human race and its non-human affiliates from the beginning of their coming into being into the unforeseeable future, struggles suggested by the embrace of multiplicity of forms by the geometric perfection of the Oracles.
Also published on Facebook
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